How can responsible practice by publishers support international development? Learn how at PfD

As always, this year’s Publishers for Development conferences will give you a chance to hear how research, scholarship and development intersect, and how you as publishers can play a vital enabling role. You will hear from a Ugandan researcher helping to ensure staple crops in Uganda are free from pests, and how a Ghanaian researcher is helping to develop new ways of assessing vulnerability and adaptations to climate change for dryland farming systems.

In both cases, you will also hear how they’ve relied on the un-sung and often invisible work of library consortia to make this possible. And we will help you understand what you can do to make sure that this potential – and the potential of thousands of other researchers and students – can be realized as they work to bring science and knowledge to bear on the development challenges their countries face.

Levelling the playing field

The new Sustainable Development Goals provide a new lens on these issues. As well as the specific targets for education and learning, they make clear the need to reduce inequalities across the world and enhance the voice of developing countries in decision making. They also talk about the partnerships we need to do this.

“Enhance the global partnership for sustainable development, complemented by multi-stakeholder partnerships that mobilize and share knowledge, expertise, technology and financial resources, to support the achievement of the sustainable development goals in all countries, in particular developing countries.”

This is where INASP’s principles for responsible business come in. Over the past couple of years we’ve worked with the PfD community to develop and discuss a series of principles to help guide publishers in their work in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and their interactions with local organizations. These are about doing business responsibly and fairly, with a concern for development, not only for maximizing sales.

Without exception, the publishers in our PfD community have enthusiastically endorsed these principles, and committed to observe these in their developing country business.

From principles to practice

Principles are important, but of course they’re only as good as the action they inspire, and the extent to which they influence day-to-day policy and practice. So we’d like to hear from you.

How have you put these into practice in the last year? What have you done differently? How have they guided your work and decisions?

By sharing what you’ve done, and how you can turn principle to practice, you will contribute to the community as a whole.

We’ll be asking the same questions of our developing country partners, asking them to share their experiences of the principles in practice.

So join us on 28 June, and come ready to discuss these issues. Together we can make a practical difference.